Work Text:
She was doing it again. Humming. And if she was humming, that meant she was dusting. Sarada’s fists clenched around the hem of her skirt. “Tch,” she gritted. This had really gone on long enough. Her mother was a powerful, fierce kunoichi. She’d seen it, for crying out loud. She could crack teeth and bone together with a finger if she so chose. Split earth. Shatter steel.
So why did she insist upon wearing around that damnable apron and playing at being a housewife all day? Like a common civilian!
“Mom.” Sarada’s feet carried her there before she had a chance to command them, but since she was already there, it was as good a time as any to take a stand on behalf of kunoichi everywhere. The apron needed to go.
The humming and the shivering of the duster stopped at once. Her mother’s head swiveled atop her neck, the stupid maid bonnet with it. “Hm?”
She took a deep breath. “Can you please just stop it?”
“What?” Her brow furrowed, confused. “What was I doing?”
“The… the humming a-a-and the cleaning and the…” She tangled her hands into her hair. “Argh! It’s just no use! This is so stupid!” she proclaimed, hammering her foot against the floorboards
Her mother’s elbow crooked, crushing the abused duster against her hip. “What are you on about, Sarada?”
She glared up at her mother, willing her to see the folly of her ways. “Would you just stop wearing that ridiculous apron! Why are you so embarrassing?” she added under her breath, palming her forehead. So frustrating!
“Now wait just a minute,” her mother fumed. “What’s wrong with my apron?”
“You just don’t get it!” she snapped back, spinning on her heel and stalking in the other direction.
This. Meant. War.
The apron hung on a peg near the refrigerator. Her mortal enemy, relaxed and sagging in such a vulnerable location. Sarada peered around the corner of the kitchen. Her mother wasn’t in there. She grinned and crept along the edge of the cabinets, planning her tactical strike.
Just then, the apron moved. She squeaked and ducked behind the cupboards, heart racing. She smiled to herself at the sensation of adrenaline fueling her veins, certain she was experiencing the thrill of the hunt all shinobi must know. A cool breeze brushed her forehead then, and logic told her that the window must be open. A stealthy peek around the corner confirmed her guess. “Bingo,” she whispered to herself. She launched herself up upon the counter and, in one vicious swipe, shut the window. "Ha!" she exclaimed, then clapped a hand over her own mouth, wide-eyed and newly alert.
The house fell silent. She crouched like a stalking tiger over the sink, eyes fixated on the object of her animosity. “So,” she cooed to it. “There you are. All alone and defenseless. How unfortunate… for you.” Keeping low over the countertops, she crept toward the apron, savoring the slow moment of her victory. She would snatch it up and torture it until it was dead dead dead.
“Sarada, who are you talking to?”
She gasped and dropped to the kitchen floor, rolling sideways toward the fridge and popping up to her feet. “Um...”--think quick!--”I was practicing! Lines for a play!”
Her mother came around the corner just then, her hair coiled into a fluffy towel atop her head, swathed in her pink bath robe. “Oh?” She smiled brightly. “I didn’t know the academy did plays. Which one is it?” The glint shimmering in her green eyes told Sarada she suspected a lie.
She grimaced and opened the fridge to hide the expression. She'd have to be smart to get out of this one. It was a clever lie, but she didn’t want to get trapped in it carelessly. “How should I know? It’s a stupid idea. I’ll probably quit.”
“I didn’t think you were a quitter, Sarada,” she challenged. Her voice took on that tonal quality that said she was frowning and about to lecture her daughter. Something about expectations and how unreasonably high they were, with the spice of potential paternal disappointment.
“This is about me being a ninja, isn’t it?” she grumbled dejectedly. They’d had this argument countless times.
Her mother sighed. Here came the lecture. “The Uchiha is a powerful clan, Sarada. Your father is--”
“Not here,” she finished for her. “How am I supposed to be this great and powerful ninja if I have no one to look up to?” She swiped a juice out of the door and slammed the fridge door shut.
“I’m right here, you know,” her mother snarled. “I got enough crap about how useless I was growing up, and I don’t need any of it from you. You want to quit, then quit. But you live with the choices you make.”
“It’s just a stupid play, Mom,” she all but whispered. And it wasn’t even a real play. But the tears were already forming, because it no longer had anything to do with the play or the apron or whether or not she wanted to be a ninja. It was that her father had left again after she’d only just met him and her mother would rather be a housewife than a ninja.
Maybe Boruto’s parents would adopt her. Even with two kids, his mom was still a jounin, and his father was Hokage.
Both of them were quiet, then. Sarada swallowed and swallowed again, willing the silent tears to dry up and disappear, but something about being a girl made her cry too much. Was that why her father wouldn’t stay at home? Of course, that thought didn’t help at all.
“I’m sorry I made you cry,” her mother said softly.
She shrugged in return. “Doesn’t matter.” She released a shuddering breath, trying to stay calm.
“It does. You got that from me. I know what crying feels like. It sucks.”
Despair washed over her. “Great,” she huffed, rolling her watery eyes. “Am I going to inherit the apron, too?”
Her mother’s eyes snapped into sharp little points. “What is it with you and my damned apron? Let it go, Sarada!”
“Oh, go dust something, Mom,” she threw back cruelly as she escaped her far-too-domestic home.
She set her alarm for midnight. She had school in the morning, but some things were just too important. The Apron had become a symbol of her mother's imprisonment. A symbol of the unethical domestication of a wild animal, like a lioness removed of its teeth. For some strange reason, Sarada's mother had given up that beautiful, ferocious smile of hers in favor of sweet humming and a filthy duster. If Sarada could destroy the apron, she could free the woman from her self-imposed chains. There's a world out there full of enemies, Mom, she thought. You can fight them like you were always meant to. Her mother in action was a work of violent art, and knowing what a keenly beautiful picture that was, she could no longer abide the dull housewife routine. I have the coolest Mom. She just needs to take the apron off and put the duster down and remind the world of that.
When the obnoxious alarm went off, she rolled out of bed stealthily and shut it off on its second ring. Her hand hovered over it and she held her breath, ears stretched and listening for a sign that her mother might have awoken. When the digital numbers changed from 12:00 to 12:01, she breathed a sigh of relief.
She tiptoed across her room, careful to avoid the creaky spots. Turned the door handle, tugged it open just enough to slide through, and slowly turned it back. Soundless. She smiled with her own brand of shinobi pride. She really did want to be a ninja, despite what she said. She just wanted it to be on her own terms. Her father wasn't here to teach her and her mother was too busy playing house. First, she'd save her mother. Then her mother, newly awoken from her thralldom, would hunt her father down and drag him back to teach her, too.
But first, the apron.
It was right there on its peg, trying to hide in the shadows. "Not this time," she whispered. "No one's here to save you."
And no one was. She stuffed it under her mattress and went back to sleep with a smile on her face. The execution would occur just before sunset the following day.
The school day was far too long. She spent the hours of her enslavement with her nose in a very particular book. It was a volume she'd snagged from Shikadai's backpack. The kid loved to learn, but he was lazy and spent most of the class period napping. He, like herself, preferred to learn in his own way on his own terms. For him, that meant when class was out and he could hide out somewhere in the sunshine with a good book. One that no one had assigned for him to read.
This particular chapter was about hand signs and how to focus chakra. She knew a great deal already, but no one--meaning her father--had quite gotten around to showing her how to use fire, and her mother wasn't really much of a ninjutsu user. Besides, she couldn't ask for her help in this.
In her head, she kept picturing her mother's frilly apron engulfed in flames. It seemed so appropriate on so many levels for the apron to meet its demise that way. That she should be the one to do it. That it should be destroyed with her father's signature jutsu. As if somehow, her and her father would free her mother together. As if by some magic, that would make the three of them a family. It didn't make any logical sense, but she just knew in her heart that the apron's destruction would be the beginning of better days.
The bell rang. Her eyes snapped up from the book. Time had snuck up on her while she was lost in thought. She snapped the cover of the book shut just as Shikodai yawned and asked, "Hey, is that my book?"
"Sorry," she murmured, handing it back to him. "I couldn't resist." She flashed him a smile and swiped up her bag.
The hour was nigh.
Boar. Horse. Tiger.
Boar. Horse. Tiger.
Boar. Horse. Tiger.
The tears had already started, but she had to keep trying. Over and over again, she made the hand signs for the fireball technique. She tried crying out the name of the jutsu (though it felt silly). She tried gathering chakra to her hands, to her face, to her lungs. Nothing was working. She didn't know how to perform this technique and the only one who could teach her was probably hundreds of miles away, thinking of any number of things that weren't teaching her how to make a fireball.
Ten paces away, the apron hung on a tree branch, swaying in the breeze as if mocking her. She bit her lip and angrily made the signs again. Boar. Horse. Tiger. "Fire style: Apron-scorching jutsu!" That wasn't what it was called... she was just hoping to make her mother's jailer a little bit scared, that was all. Thinking that didn't end up making her feel any better, though. Worse, even.
She'd had enough. She growled and snarled and stalked around in a circle, firing fierce glares of rage in its direction. If looks could kill, she'd set that thing ablaze with one eye, disintegrate it with two. In response, the apron caught a particularly strong breeze and twisted upon itself. "I will set you on fire!" she shouted at it, stabbing a finger towards it.
And then she had a thought.
"Do you have a lighter?" she asked.
Boruto's face scrunched up. "If you've picked up smoking, count me out. I have enough problems to deal with, and that's the kind of thing that upsets Mom more than Dad." And they both knew that upsetting his mother was about as close as one could come to damning one's own soul.
She took a breath and tried to calm down. "What did you do this time?"
He grinned. "Something awful."
"How awful?" His smile widened. "More awful than the time you dropped itching powder into the laundry?"
He sniggered, trying to contain himself. "Oh man. Dad was so mad."
"So was it that awful?"
"Ha." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "Worse."
"Tell me," she demanded hungrily. She wasn't foolish enough to try any of Boruto's stupid pranks, but sometimes she wished that she was. He got to have all the fun while she dealt with all of her expectations.
He crossed his arms and straightened. "What do you need the lighter for?" he asked suspiciously.
"Duh, to set something on fire." Obviously.
"I'm so in!"
"It's... an apron." Boruto seemed surprised. And disappointed.
"No. It's my mom's apron," she corrected, as if the apostrophe made all the difference.
Every angle on his face stretched to bizarre lengths, a comical mix of confusion and overthinking. He looked at the apron, crumpled into a heap upon the grass, and then at the lighter in his hand. The small flame was flickering in the gentle summer breeze. Sarada watched his expression, observing the moment it transitioned from analyzing her level of insanity into satisfaction that at least something was to be set on fire. The moment he did, his face adopted an expression of pure bliss. He set the small flame to the apron. It smoldered slowly, but with some fanning and some extra fuel in the form of some dead leaves, the flames grew.
And together they watched the apron burn.
In the flames, she saw her mother's mask of wrath as she fought for her family. She was the undiluted furor of angry woman, concentrated rage at a level of pissed off this world had never seen before. She imagined the shackles of chores releasing her mom, wisping away on the smoke as it crackled into the sky. The thought brought a prophetic smile to her face.
She'd done it. Now her mother could be free.
"Sarada." The tone of warning was there. Her mother was not an unintelligent woman. She remembered their cryptic conversation and deduced the rest of the truth.
"Mom," she returned in kind. She was prepared.
Her bony arms crossed. Sarada recognized the pose as the I'm-the-parent-and-you're-small approach. "Where's my apron?"
She was riding the high from her victory. The deed was done. It was time for a heroic speech. Today was a day of celebration and epic win. "Probably drifting away on a breeze," she responded flippantly.
Her mother's eyebrow rose a fraction. She wasn't buying it. What she didn't know was that it was probably true. "I'm not lying, Mom," she replied evenly. "I lit it on fire and watched it turn to ash."
"You what?!"
"You're welcome," she snipped, copying her mother's pose.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Alright, explain your angle. Because I know you have one. You're too smart for your own good." She waited.
"Those apron strings are chains," she hissed. "You were a student of Hatake Kakashi, the sixth Hokage." She pushed her glasses up her nose. "You were the apprentice of Tsunade, the fifth Hokage, one of the legendary sannin and the toughest kunoichi of all time. You were a teammate of Uzumaki Naruto, the seventh Hokage. And from what I hear, Dad was the most sought after man in all of Konoha, but he married you. And I've seen you fight. You're amazing."
Her mother sighed and made a face that said: and?
"Everyone else's parents are teaching them secret clan techniques and special jutsu. Everyone else's parents are jounin or tokubetsu jounin or Anbu or Hokage," she spat. "Yet my Dad is out god-knows-where doing god-knows-what and my mother--the greatest kunoichi who ever lived--wears a frilled apron instead of a flak jacket and wields a duster instead of a kunai." She realized she was shouting and bit her lip, but her expression remained accusatory, demanding an explanation.
"I see," her mother said at last. She tipped sideways, letting her shoulder bump into the wall as she considered. "You know, I probably could have been Hokage."
This was new. And surprising. And just enough to make her ask, "Why didn't you go for it then?"
She smiled. "Then you'd never see me, either."
It was a shot to the heart. Boruto complained constantly that his father was too busy for him. That her mother might have given up such ambitions just to spend time with her...
But she wasn't finished. "I could have been Anbu. I've been approached several times, but... well, let's just say that the work and I are not compatible. I prefer to save more than I kill. I could have gone with your father, too." She wrinkled her nose. "He told me not to go, but... I think I might have been able to persuade him. If I really wanted to." She paused. "I want to be here. In this house. Sasuke's house. My house. Your house. Our home. And because it's our home, I want it to be the best home it can be. If I can keep it shiny and neat, well and good. But if that for some reason upsets you, I'll let it get messy. What's more important to me isn't that the house is clean, but that you're in it with me, Sarada." She beamed.
Sarada realized she was smiling. And crying. "Then why won't you train me?" she wondered.
"Well. I suppose that's because you've never asked," she replied with a shrug. "Your father didn't like anyone to presume he needed help, and you are your father's child."
"But I'm your daughter, too," she countered.
She nodded. "Yes. You are definitely my daughter, too." She smiled. "You know what? Let me go grab that flak jacket you're missing, and we'll see just how true that really is."
Sarada threw both fists into the air the moment her mother disappeared down the hallway. "Victory is mine!" she bellowed dramatically.
"I heard that!" her mother called from her bedroom.
She didn't care. She was too busy giggling, thinking of her mother going to war in an apron, her face all fierce and determined with the fronds of her duster blowing in a cinematic breeze.